When the appeal of a dominant leader is greater than a prestige leader.
Abstract
Across the globe we witness the rise of populist authoritarian leaders who are overbearing
in their narrative, aggressive in behavior, and often exhibit questionable moral character.
Drawing on evolutionary theory of leadership emergence, in which dominance and prestige
are seen as dual routes to leadership, we provide a situational and psychological
account for when and why dominant leaders are preferred over other respected and admired
candidates. We test our hypothesis using three studies, encompassing more than 140,000
participants, across 69 countries and spanning the past two decades. We find robust
support for our hypothesis that under a situational threat of economic uncertainty
(as exemplified by the poverty rate, the housing vacancy rate, and the unemployment
rate) people escalate their support for dominant leaders. Further, we find that this
phenomenon is mediated by participants' psychological sense of a lack of personal
control. Together, these results provide large-scale, globally representative evidence
for the structural and psychological antecedents that increase the preference for
dominant leaders over their prestigious counterparts.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19293Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1073/pnas.1617711114Publication Info
Kakkar, Hemant; & Sivanathan, Niro (2017). When the appeal of a dominant leader is greater than a prestige leader. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(26). pp. 6734-6739. 10.1073/pnas.1617711114. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19293.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Hemant Kakkar
Assistant Professor of Business Administration

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